Renfield Trailer: Life Sucks When Your Boss Is Dracula

It continues to boggle my mind a little we're getting two "Dracula" movies this year and they couldn't be less alike on paper. There's "The Last Voyage of the Demeter," which has all the makings of a claustrophobic horror thriller in the manner of "Alien," only crossed with a nautical period drama (think "The Terror" season 1). And there's "Renfield," a horror-comedy that appears to be borrowing a page — if not multiple pages — from the "What We Do in the Shadows" TV show's playbook by using vampires and their familiars to explore co-dependency and toxic relationships.

The biggest selling point for "Renfield" is, without a doubt, Nicolas Cage playing Dracula. It's the kind of casting choice that feels so perfect it's a wonder it took Hollywood so long to make it. (Seriously, how did we end up with Gerard Butler as the Count in "Dracula 2000" a whole two decades before Cage? Bear in mind, I say that with no disrespect to "Dracula 2000," which is absolutely the type of ridiculous trash cinema Butler specializes in.) Of course, as Cage has emphasized in previous interviews, it's Nicholas Hoult as Drac's long-suffering familiar and his attempts to liberate himself from his narcissistic, literal blood-sucking boss that's actually the focus in "Renfield." For more on that, check out the movie's final trailer embedded below.

"Renfield" was directed by Chris McKay ("The LEGO Batman Movie," "The Tomorrow War") from a screenplay by Ryan Ridley ("Ghosted," "Rick & Morty"), itself based on an idea credited to "The Walking Dead" and "Invincible" comic book creator Robert Kirkman. You can clearly see all three of these gents' influences in the film's trailers, which combine character-based humor and high-octane action (à la McKay's past work) with an irreverent take on familiar genre tropes that bring to mind Ridley's previous TV writing. There's also the hyper-graphic violence that Kirkman loves, although that's obviously only alluded to in these green-band previews.

This feels like a good place to clarify: I remain cautiously interested in "Renfield" in spite of Universal's marketing, not because of it. Nicholas Hoult seems to give considerable thought to the projects he works on these days (especially when it comes to dark comedies — see also "The Favourite" and "The Menu"), and my hope is the film's trailers are deliberately playing up the scenes where Renfield deploys his spider-fueled super-powers to make this seem like more of an action movie than it really is. And if it's a terrible as some of my co-workers understandably fear it will be, well, there's still "The Last Voyage of the Demeter."

"Renfield" opens in theaters on April 14, 2023. Its official synopsis reads:

In this modern monster tale of Dracula's loyal servant, Nicholas Hoult ("Mad Max: Fury Road," "X-Men" franchise) stars as Renfield, the tortured aide to history's most narcissistic boss, Dracula (Oscar® winner Nicolas Cage). Renfield is forced to procure his master's prey and do his every bidding, no matter how debased. But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is ready to see if there's a life outside the shadow of The Prince of Darkness. If only he can figure out how to end his codependency.